


Chamber

by Arisusan



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, Dialogue Heavy, Fluff, Gen, attempted discussion but it's misfire so it's kind of a monologue, i don't even know whether i wrote it as platonic or romantic, this is SAPPY and i am EMBARRASSING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 12:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15729363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arisusan/pseuds/Arisusan
Summary: Misfire's been doing the talking for both of them for years; Grimlock's fine with it by now, but he still makes an effort to communicate. Even so, most of what they talk about is stuff they already know.Note: takes place in some alternate continuity where things have ended but nothing too big has happened, so we can have a nice peaceful denouement and no one's stuck in alternate universes/the past/other timelines/I don't even know.





	Chamber

**Author's Note:**

> This is like. Hugely soppy. Too soppy, one might think, except even canon's pretty darned soppy too. Anyhow, I just needed to write these guys talking it out because they haven't had a lot of time to talk but CLEARLY they love each other very much and have a lot in common, when you think about it. Wrongful imprisonment, being a disgrace to their faction, becoming fiercely attached to their found family.

Hard to believe it was over now, after all that.  _All that_ being the whole thing with the 'bots and Megatron. Not including the thing with Scorponok and the baby and Garrus-9, though from what Megs had told 'em it was kind of the same thing. Technically, if Scorponok was part of it, then it had started back when they found Grimsy. Maybe before. He'd never have run into Grimsy if Krok 'n Spin hadn't broken him out. And  _they_ wouldn't have broken him out unless  _Thundersaur_ …well, long story short, there'd been 4 million years of war and those had been uneventful compared to what had happened since then.

And it was over. Probably. At least, he couldn't see too many loose ends that had to be tied up. Spin was still busy in the medbay, Fulcrum was having a  _long_ and interesting-looking conversation with that Brainstorm guy, Crankcase was cranky and Krok had hit it off with that skinny little guy with those incredible eyebrows. Even Swerve was being serious for once, dealing with what he said were a lotta repressed feelings, type of thing. Anyway, the Scavvies were all scattered and Swerve needed his time, so Misfire had followed Grimlock out of the throng to a spot just in the shadow of the ship, out of sight.

If he cared that Misfire had followed him, he didn't show it. Just sat down criss-cross-turbofox and stared out into the distance. At least one thing hadn't changed.

"Mind if I join ya? Just sayin', if you want a bit of quiet time, you're going to have to kick me out."

"I know."

A few more seconds saw  _no_ additional comments, so he dropped down next to him and followed his gaze to the flat and pretty boring horizon.

Hard to believe it was over.

…

Twenty seconds. That was how long the silence lasted.

"So, Grimsy. You're talking now."

He'd expected this, and turned his head to see Misfire smile.

"I'm glad."

He'd expected this, and a part of him must have wanted it, too. "Me too."

"Ha. Yeah."

"Yeah. Means I'll finally be able to get a word in edgewise."

"Oh, come now, you know I won't wait for your turn even now that your brain's back in its place. I'm a ve-ri-ta-ble chatterbox."

Misfire tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and gave away the lie by waiting a moment, head cocked expectantly.

"Yeah, you are. It's not all bad."

"I guess so, otherwise you'd'a eaten me already!" Misfire put on his joke voice, pitch climbing until his vocalizer spit static before finally easing off. "Just kidding. I mean Krok and Spin would've left me after they'd broken me out."

"Of prison."

"Prison, yeah. Not the best place, that's for sure!"

He paused again, showing that something was weighing on his overcrowded, understaffed mind.

"Yeah, you could say that."

Misfire fidgeted with his kibble. "You know, buddy, you were in prison, too. I mean—listen, I'm not expecting—I—I know some things happened to you. You told us some, Krok knows some, some of it's on the net, some of it's from Scorponok. Evil little twerp. Ouch!"

Whatever he'd done, it had ended a spare scrap of plating coming off in his hand. He examined it carefully, craning his neck, then abruptly tossed it up, caught it, and stashed it in subspace.

"A-a-and I'm not saying you have to talk about them, but, say, if you wanted to talk about…prison, I've been there. Not Garrus-9, but not great, either. And—and you know me. You know, even if I talk a lot, even if I talk too much about everything, I won't spill. Promise. Not that you're going to, not that you should, but if you do—well—" His hands shook as he tapped his fingers on his armour. "—you're safe with me. I'll make sure you're safe with me. Okay. Yeah. That was a lot of talking."

He grabbed at Grimlock's hand. "So—"

" _Don't_ ," Grimlock interrupted. Misfire stopped for a moment, fixed him with a puzzled look. Then he jumped away, hand snapping back and optics flaring up as if he'd been burned.

"Oh! Oh, sorry. Yep, my bad." He patted the air above Grimlock's forearm. "Not going to do that again. Sorry."

He then pulled his knees up and twined his arms together under them. "Shoulda figured you wouldn't be too keen on the touch thing, after—you know—yeah. Sorry. Anyway, what d'you think about the future? Going back to the Autobots? Your old team? I know you miss them."

It was a question Grimlock had pondered a few times. The sword had reminded him that whatever the Scavengers were to him, there a family somewhere else that had been  _his_ for millions of years.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "They were—they were important to me."

Hah, that was the understatement of the millennium.

"I know."

"Hell," he continued, "I was with them longer than anyone. Nearly died for them, a bunch of times."

There were things he knew, and things he didn't know about them, so he wouldn't bother complicating this with what-ifs and probablys. "But I betrayed them more than once, and the Autobots have no reason to want me back. I was a liability, a brutal and a costly one."

"If it counts for anything, we 'cons were all frikkin' terrified of you." Misfire gave him a grin and a thumbs up. "You did good work."

It was such a causal comment. As if Misfire hadn't—in his words—bared his frikkin' spark.

His smile wouldn't show through the mask, but Grimlock knew he would be able to read it. "I hope you don't feel that way now."

"How could I?" said Misfire, waving a hand. "Only time I was scared was that first time we found you, plus a couple of times after when you went rampaging all over the place, and you really freaked me out when you were talking when we didn't know why you could talk sometimes and not other times, and when you ran off on Earth, and when Scorponok put you to sleep, and when you started rampaging and I had to talk you out of it, and I—"

He paused for a breath in the middle of the verbal sprint, and swallowed hard, breaking optic contact. "I was really, really,  _really_  scared when you knocked us all into that portal and disappeared. Like, really. But yeah, I'm not scared of you any more. Not Grimsy."

His arms had migrated so that both were slung over his knees, one wrist in the other hand, his grip on it tightening as he spoke.

The Scavengers didn't live a life of luxury, which meant that Grimlock could hear the joints squeak.

"You can touch me, if you want," he said, unable to think of something to say to that.

"What?"

"I just said that to see if you'd stop. Didn't want you to. Just needed to test you."

"Oh. Oh!" Misfire met his eyes again. "Okay!"

He took his hand more gently this time, and straightened it out. It was a familiar feeling from the years they'd spent together to have him go over it methodically, Each finger was bent one joint at a time, then checked for grit and rust and cleaned out as best as Misfire's set of picks were able.

"So, you don't know if you're going back to Cybertron," he said quietly.

"Not planning on it." Was a time every touch that met Grimlock was a blow. Misfire's quick and gentle, sometimes jerky movements were what he knew now. "Not alone."

"Hey, I get it. No way I'm going back to the real Decepticons after this. It's been way too weird. Plus—Megatron? Seriously? I still can't believe he didn't shoot us all. And did you see him with Ultra Magnus? I mean, sure, he's got great shoulders—and a great chest, too, and his  _guns_ —but he's Ultra Magnus! Autobot, what, three-I-C? Two-I-C? Unofficial something? Krok would know. Anyway, if he strolled into an Autobot camp back in the day and Prime wasn't around, he was in charge. If Megatron's doing the ritus with him, I can stay here."

"But where's 'here'?"

"Dunno. With the Scavengers. Maybe with you, if you go off and do your own thing and need a buddy. But that's enough about me!" Misfire rocked back and forth where they sat. "I've been talking for both of us for years. What about you? What're you itching to say?"

Grimlock let off the engine dampeners just a bit, chassis rumbling somewhere at the bottom of their audial range.

"Well, if we're starting from the beginning, I'm surprised you lot didn't kill me."

Red optics turned on him and narrowed as Misfire grinned.

"Fulcrum said we should help you 'cos the war's over. I said whoever's won, you're either useful as a prisoner or useful as an ally. That, and you weren't going to be in any position to hurt us for a while."

 _Just_  when he thought he had the measure of him, Misfire always came up with some new cunning, insane, or sometimes even mundane but completely unexpected idea to throw at him.

"Huh. Yeah, guess so, but I still had my alt mode."

Setting one hand down at his side, Misfire reached over him for the second, growling softly in frustration when his arms proved too short. Grimlock left him for just a moment before moving his left hand within reach of Misfire's.

"Thanks, Grimsy. That bit's simple. We didn't find out about  _that_  until later."

"'M also surprised you didn't hit me more often."

"You're an Autobot," whined Misfire. "Shouldn't you think it was just basic decency?"

"I'm a killer," he grumbled. I'd have hit me."

Would he? That's what he thought, but his brain wasn't exactly top-of-the-line these days. Misfire also seemed to doubt him for a moment, frowning.

"Well, yeah. It took a bit of self-control at first, but, hey, what can I say? I'm good with people."

"You are." That, he meant.

"Also, like, I was kind of way too scared to risk getting on your bad side, you know? At first. And for a bit after, but not the whole time. I think after a year or so I figured, you know, if you were yourself enough to want to kill me, you would also be yourself enough to know I cared for you."

Finished with the second hand, Misfire let his fingers linger on it for a moment before releasing it. They sat side-by-side now, close but not touching, Grimlock watching him and Misfire staring straight ahead.

"Cared about me or took care of me?"

"Aw, damn." The fidgeting started again, Misfire's fingers working their way into his knee joints and digging for pebbles. "And here I thought you wouldn't notice the ambiguous syntax. First one. Second one. Both. Mostly the second one. Didn't know how sentimental you were, but I knew you had to be practical."

"Funny. Everyone who knew me would say it was the other way around."

"I suppose so. But I didn't know you, then."

This was another of the times where a small glimpse of Flyhigh peeked through the clouds of Misfire.

"Do you know me now?"

"No idea," was the flippant reply. "I read everything I could find on the network, because I thought that would help, but it left out a lot of stuff. Important stuff.

"What's that suppose to mean?"

"What happened to you after Garrus-9 stuff. And it was wrong about some other things…" Misfire trailed off calmly, face blank, then snapped to attention. "Wait—why am I still talking? I said, like,  _lines_  ago that you were supposed to be making up for lost time."

"I kept asking questions, that's why," he answered, and felt his engine rumble in a subsonic laugh.

"Oh, fine. But you're talking now!" Misfire gestured wildly. "Chop chop, bang bang, go. Run your mouth. Monologue. Gimme a nice voiceover narration or something."

"There's not much for me to say. I'm Grimlock, I had a squad, I betrayed my squad, I nearly lost my squad, and then my squad left me. Ex-Con, ex-Bot, got stuck in prison then grabbed and tortured. Ran around with you idiots for a while."

He punched Misfire in the shoulder to get his point across, but instead of returning it the mech just swayed sideways.

"We're  _Scavengers_. Spinister's the idiot."

"You're all idiots.  _We're_  all idiots, I suppose, since I chose to stay with you."

"Well, you didn't have much of a choice."

Misfire folded his arms on top of his knees, then slipped them over to hug himself close.  _I could do that_ , Grimlock thought. _I should_. But—no, this was Misfire telling him what he thought, in more ways than. He should listen for a few minutes more. That was a lesson he'd learned from his family, though it had been too late for them.

"I didn't then. I do now."

They'd been—Misfire had been avoiding eye contact, but now he looked up at him, lips bitten and open uncertainly.

"Does that mean you'll stay with us?"

Something hurt in Grimlock's workings, but not in his head, for a change.

"You gave me a choice once before. Go or stay."

"I thought you said you didn't have much of a choice, then."

Something in that halting voice made him gave into temptation. He looped an arm around Misfire's shoulders, tracing the angles of his plating with his right hand.

"I  _meant_  when you picked me up out of the pod," he said. "What I mean is—you already know my answer."

"So you'll stay." Misfire snuggled into his side and wrapped his arms as best he could around his waist. "Good."

"Where you go, I go. If you'll have me."

"Always. I need you, Grimsy, now as I did then."

Grimlock tightened his hold on him.

"I want to tell you."

"Huh?"

Misfire wasn't a mind-reader. Yeah. Made sense. "You're asking if I want to tell you about what happened. I do. I want to, and I will, but not now."

"All right. Take as much time as you want."

A slow, broad smile spread across his face for no one to see.

"Oh, I'm ready. It's just that I'm happy right now, and I don't want to ruin this."

Misfire nodded into his side. After a minute, he pulled away and put a hand to Grimlock's jaw, drawing it to the side so he could fix him with blazing optics.

"I know this is kinda rich, coming from me," he said softly, "But do you ever think before saying things?"

"I think more than you do," Grimlock teased.

"Yeah." A wobbly smile crawled across Misfire's face. "Yeah, I know. But you really do things to me when you say stuff like that. Don't know if my spark's starting to shrink or if it's about to burst."

"And you think it doesn't work the other way around?"

"Yes. No. Maybe." His partner sighed, and smiled contentedly. "I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> Fulcrum is talking to Brainstorm because even though I seriously doubt that Fulcrum=Pivot is true, I still think it would be interesting if it were. Krok and Rung are discussing the rehabilitation centre he wants to open. Swerve is dealing with something involving Skids. Personally, I don't think he's dead for reasons detailed in my other fic but ANYWAY that's just an explanation of why everyone's doing what they're doing. 
> 
> Criss-cross-turbofox has the same number of syllables as criss-cross-apple-sauce.
> 
> If there are any errors, please drop me a line! I kinda edited this late so there's probably something


End file.
